All buildings use glass in the building envelope, and all will have some breakage during their service life. But sudden, unexplained breakage is not normal, expected, or acceptable. Spontaneous breakage is most likely caused by a defect in manufacturing, fabrication, or installation, including surface scratches, edge defects, thermal shock, edge contact, and inclusions.
As more states, jurisdictions and the design community require air barriers, the issue of connecting the wall air barrier assembly to other building assemblies, such as below grade, window systems and roofs need to be completely understood in order to design and construct a functioning building enclosure.
In this course we will present a basic guideline for identifying and understanding water ingress in new and existing buildings. We will review the different modes of water-related building enclosure failures, discussing how to identify and approach repair of both unique and systemic issues, in the context of multiple different building typologies, materials, and typical assemblies.
The building enclosure design is an important element in all project construction types but is elevated more when considering the use of Mass Timber. In the Southern US region, the learning curve is high androject examples are low for Mass Timber. Two projects in the Houston area have experienced high rain levels and even a rare snow storm event during construction.